The Execution of Nathan Hale-234 years ago today.

Pretend for a moment that the second American Revolution now rages. All we C4L folks, Tea Partiers, libertarians, anarchists, States’ Righters, home schoolers — everyone fed up with DC’s dictatorship has grabbed a gun and converged on the Beltway. For one glorious week, we besiege the politicians and bureaucrats, largely because their incredulity that serfs would actually rebel paralyzes them. Our enormous enthusiasm bounds higher.

Then the Pentagon marches a couple regiments of the US Army against us. We retreat, all the way to New York City. Now, almost eighteen months after the first shots flew, we’re depressed and discouraged. We’ve learned how boring, terrifying, and lethal war is, even one for liberty. Many of us have not only lost family and friends, we’ve watched them die. And the stench — of blood, fear, death — hangs everywhere, a miasma thick and inescapable as taxes.

We’re weak and exhausted, too. Seems as though someone’s always sick with a cold or flu, and it roars through camp. Nor does the hunger help: we’re as short of rations as we are everything else.